


That Good Night

by dessert_first



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, Episode: s05e04 The End, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-09
Updated: 2011-05-09
Packaged: 2017-10-19 04:27:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/196876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dessert_first/pseuds/dessert_first
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An interlude in "The End"; future!Cas and Risa and broken things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Good Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ifreet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifreet/gifts), [sisterofdream](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=sisterofdream).



Everything is as prepared as it's going to get. The weapons, the gear, and the men are all ready for their strike on Dean's order. Now it's just a matter of waiting for midnight.

Cas turns to Risa and shrugs. "Guess we're set."

"Yeah," she says, slamming the door shut on the battered old SUV.

They both look over at Dean's cabin. The light is still on, the Deans probably still talking to each other. Cas bets they have a lot to say.

"You know we're probably going to die tomorrow, right?" Risa frowns, her eyes tracking one of the Deans as he moves past the window. "I mean, his plans often suck, but this one really, really sucks."

"I know," Cas says. He tears his gaze away from the window and looks at her. The color in her cheeks is high, a flush warming the skin over her cheekbones, and her hair spills out of its ponytail to frame her face in disorderly wisps. "Want a hit before we shuffle off this mortal coil?"

She tilts her head, considering him. "You can keep your drugs, Cas. But I wouldn't say no to some company."

Cas blinks. Recovering, he bows from the waist and gestures down the path towards his own cabin. "I'd be honored."

They share the rueful smile of old friends and turn away from the light that still spills from Dean's window.

At the cabin, Cas parts the beads strung across the doorway and welcomes Risa in. It's not the first time she's been over, but it's infrequent enough that it feels like an occasion. He waves her in and she sits on one of the pillows strewn on the floor, crosses her arms and watches him move about the room, lighting candles and finding clean glasses. The smell of incense and cannabis are, as always, heavy in the air. He pours her a drink, and she accepts.

"How'd things get so screwed up, Cas?" Risa asks, looking down into her glass, swirling the liquid.

He barks out a short, sharp laugh before he can stop himself. "That," he finally says, "is a far longer story than I have the time or patience for at present."

"Yeah," she says, finally bringing the glass up to her lips.

Dean has kissed those lips, many a time. Has kissed her body, like he's kissed Cas's. Like he'd kissed Castiel's. Dean rarely comes to his door these days for anything other than business, but that's not enough to make Cas leave.

He is alone on this planet, in this universe. He turned his back on everything he'd ever known for Dean, and it wasn't enough to save the world. It wasn't even enough for them to save each other. They'd only watched each other break irrevocably, in bits and pieces over the long years, but unable to depart from each other's orbits.

It was the one constant Cas could offer his erstwhile charge in a senseless universe: Cas would never leave him.

Not even death had parted them, though Cas has no illusions he'll be getting any third chances. He's been saying his goodbyes for so very long now, it might almost be a relief to have it done with; the war he can never win, the world he can never save, the man he can never have.

Risa swallows down whiskey, licks a stray drop from that mouth Dean had pressed his own to just a few nights ago. Cas imagines it might still taste of him. When he looks up to meet her gaze, he finds it trained on his own lips, as if her thoughts were echoing his. "When's the last time you slept with him?" she asks, frank as always.

Cas appreciates Risa's lack of pretense. He always has.

"Four days ago," he says. "Wine, women and song. And his sweet dick in my mouth." He closes his eyes, sinks into the memory. He hears the rustle of her clothes on the silky fabric of her pillow, then feels her gentle, calloused fingers trace his lips.

"I love that bastard," she says, absently. "And now he's going to kill us."

"Yes," Cas says. Her fingers move over his mouth, brush his stubbled face, up his jaw, across his cheekbone, down his nose. Jimmy Novak's nose, but Jimmy's long gone; has been for years. It's only Cas in here now, all alone. He parts his lips and takes her fingers into his mouth, draws them in deeper, laves them with his tongue, sucks them like he did Dean.

She crawls closer, her face intent. The fingers of her other hand settle in his hair, and she tilts his face up. "Maybe the other Dean will change things," she says. "Maybe he'll go back and fix everything."

But Risa's not the type to believe in fairy tales, and there's no conviction in her voice, just an offhand flight of fancy. An idle what-if. She pulls her fingers from his mouth and sits back on her heels, watching him.

"What would you have him change?" he asks. "Besides the obvious."

"You mean, would I rather not have met him? Not have fucked him? Not have fucked you?"

Castiel shrugs.

"You're not useless, you know," she says, changing tacks abruptly the way she often does. Dean likes her quick mind; it makes her valuable in the battlefield.

"Well, I wouldn't say I'm use _ful_ ," he shrugs. But dying; dying he can do. Has been for a long time. He touches her lips, following the path she traced earlier on his own.

"He saved me," she says, her mouth forming the words under his fingers. "When the Croates took my sister I was… he gave me purpose again."

"I know."

"He made it seem like there could still be a reason to keep going, like I could help make things better. But there's no helping this, is there? The world's too far gone. Everything's broken."

Cas doesn't answer, just leans up and kisses her, tastes her lips the way he'd wanted to. She opens for him, lets him in, chases back into his mouth, and he imagines she is, like him, pretending Dean's taste still lingers there. He puts his hands on her waist, just above the curve of her hips, and she moans sweetly. They are both kneeling up, mouths fused together, and it's bittersweet and warm and wet and one last goodbye.

Risa pushes Cas down onto the rug and sets to work on his buttons, breaks away to pull her jacket and shirt off and leans back over him, bare breasts full and ripe. Cas pulls open the button of her jeans, tugs blindly at the zipper, and she toes off her boots, slips out of jeans and underwear like a snake shucking its skin. He can't help a satisfied hum when his hands find the warm skin of her bare thigh. Pulling on it, he coaxes her to straddle him, hands on her ass gently guiding her to settle over his face, and she's warm and sweet and musk and earth, everything good about this hard, stark, physical world.

He closes his eyes and breathes in her scent, smoothes his hands back and forth over the swell of her hips, the curve of her ass. The first liquid glide of his tongue on her makes her cry out, and she grows wet for him.

She always does.

Cas sets to his task, kissing her deeply, licking and sucking, tasting all of her, that secret part of her that's always hidden from the world. She stays poised over him, balanced on her knees, thighs tight with strain, and he eats her out the way Dean taught him to so long ago, with a girl from a bar who had long dark hair and a wicked smile. He is gentle and thorough and Risa tastes so good, so _alive_ , he can't conceive of the world without her in it. In this moment, she has become his world.

She is loud and beautifully uncensored, makes a symphony of sounds, and sets gentle hands in Cas's hair. Her whole body moves and he pictures her, wonders if her eyes are closed to focus on the sensation of his lips on her, his tongue inside her. Or perhaps they are open, looking down at the sight of him nestled between her thighs.

Her body shakes as she comes, and he's glad he could give her this, if only this. It's all he has left to give.

Risa pulls away, and her smile when she looks down at him is softer, a glimpse at who she used to be before the world ended. She climbs off him unsteadily and offers him a hand, and they help each other up off the floor and onto the bed, pushing down the comforter and pulling off Cas's clothes.

They lie on their sides, kissing, and it’s slow and almost sweet. They know each other's bodies by now—Risa knows the sensitive spot at the base of his neck; Cas knows the exact pressure she likes when he touches her breasts. It's one more thing they share.

Risa tastes like whiskey, like herself, and not the slightest bit like Dean, but that's all right. Cas kisses deeper, and she matches his intensity, wraps herself around him and holds him down, keeps him from floating away on a sea of absinthe and helpless, hopeless defeat, rage, regret. Her hands grip his shoulders, his biceps, his back, and she pulls him closer, closer still. He fumbles under the pillows for a condom and she takes it from him, rips the foil and smoothes it down over his erection, wraps her legs around his waist and takes him in, into heat and pressure and the closest he will ever get to another human being; the closest approximation there exists to the unity of the Host.

He rocks in and out of her and she moves with him, perfectly in sync, her face illuminated by the candlelight and so beautiful. They are all so very beautiful; all these frail, flailing, lost and broken humans, every one. Cas is among them, but he is not of them, though of his Father's gifts a meager glimpse of true perception is all that he has left. He sees Risa, sees all her hopes and dreams and memories, both good and bad, sees the whole of her and her unlimited potential, her astounding beauty.

Like Cas, like her sister before her and her friends and family, like their fellow soldiers and, despite his best hopes, like their Dean, she will be dead tomorrow, all that limitless possibility ended. Nor is there any more hope of Heaven, or of Paradise, without God and his angels. Cas doesn't know where she will end up; if she will simply cease to be. In that moment, he cannot bear it, and he moves deeper into her and cleaves to her, and presses his face into the strong curve of her neck. Her arms draw him impossibly closer, and she doesn't mention the warm, wet drip of his tears on her skin.

Cas has failed her, has failed humanity, and they are all so very precious and rare.

"I couldn't stop it. I couldn’t stop any of it," he admits later, curled together in bed like children hiding under the covers.

"I know," she says, and cards her fingers through his hair. "I know."

The minutes tick closer to midnight and it's not all right, and it never will be, but it's all they've got.


End file.
